Gleason: Gilmour retirement marks end of era at Monticello Raceway

Tuesday

Dec 11, 2012 at 2:00 AM

MONTICELLO — The 74-year-old just-retired harness driver is sponging the belly of his favorite horse in a paddock stall at Monticello Raceway. John Gilmour continues prepping My Buddy Chimo for the 10th race when he's asked about retirement.

Kevin Gleason

MONTICELLO — The 74-year-old just-retired harness driver is sponging the belly of his favorite horse in a paddock stall at Monticello Raceway. John Gilmour continues prepping My Buddy Chimo for the 10th race when he's asked about retirement.

Why didn't he retire two years ago when he underwent chemotherapy for 2﻿1/2 months to get rid of colon cancer? Or why not last year when he kicked prostrate cancer into the backstretch with 45 radiation treatments?

The answer, well, is because Gilmour wasn't ready to retire then. He was ready after driving Chimo to victory on Nov. 28, Gilmour's 4,492nd win in a career that began 58 years ago.

Gilmour was as competitive as they come on the track. "If he had the rail,'' Billy Parker Jr. said, "you had to loop him.'' He would battle with fellow drivers and scream it out with them after the race. Then he would join them at the bar across the street and laugh into the night.

But Gilmour was never a self-promoter. Getting him to discuss himself is almost as difficult as getting him to yield space on the track. So nobody was surprised when Gilmour told only his daughter and girlfriend about his impending retirement. Gilmour figured he'd call it quits after Chimo won or an ominous sign of Raceway winters, the first snowfall at Monticello. When they happened on consecutive days, he made it official.

"My time had come,'' Gilmour says, placing equipment on Chimo as the race nears. "I just didn't have the killer instinct.''

He was once the star of a star-studded show at Monticello Raceway. Gilmour, born in Lucan, Ontario, from an ultra-successful family of horsemen, arrived at Monticello in the mid-1960s. Gilmour became a sought-after catch driver and won nine driving titles in the '70s and early '80s, three times setting track records for single-season wins.

The game continued to change as Gilmour aged. OTB. Simulcasting. An influx of entertainment options. Casinos. The grandstand emptied and Gilmour kept smiling. Don't ask him to bad-mouth the sport. It's been too good to him. How else to explain a man who smiles and laughs this much?

Gilmour owns two horses and will continue to train a half-dozen or so. He will still get to the track each morning, albeit at 8:30 or 9 instead of the 6:30 or 7 arrival time of his younger days.

"Oh, I'm not going to walk away,'' he says, Chimo poking his head over Gilmour's right shoulder as if to eavesdrop. "No, no. Unless something happens to me. Unless the good Lord wants me. What I enjoy most is taking care of horses. I go to the barn in the morning come back later and they are whinnying for me.'' Gilmour smiles again. "It makes you feel good.''

You might remember My Buddy Chimo. The late Don Karkos, a Monticello paddock security guard who owned Chimo with Gilmour, was applying a piece of equipment to the horse in 2006 when the animal threw his head. The blow knocked Karkos against the wall of the stall. Karkos had been blind in one eye as the result of an explosion on a Navy vessel he was aboard in 1942 while serving in World War II. But the impact somehow helped restore Karkos' vision.

As he hands over Chimo to driver Richard Harp, Gilmour is asked about hobbies. He mentions playing golf once in a while. But what he likes more than almost anything is getting into his Toyota each Sunday morning and spending the day driving alone around New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He checks out the sites, pays visits, grabs a bite to eat.

There is no gameplan, just a man content with his life while music plays in the background.

Gilmour steps outside to watch Harp drive My Buddy Chimo to a third-place finish. He turns back toward the paddock and laughs. "That'll help my retirement,'' he says. "I think he ran good.''

Chimo is back in the paddock stall getting a bit worked up after the race. Gilmour gently applies a red blanket to the horse and they walk side by side toward the barn.